As president, Putin has consolidated his power through attacks on the independent media, the persecution of political opponents, and restrictions on civil society. He has annexed Crimea, supported violent separatists in Ukraine, fostered anti-democratic right-wing forces in Europe, and made the weakening of NATO a major strategic imperative.

None of that has kept Donald Trump from praising Putin and welcoming Putin’s praise for him. In Wednesday night’s forum on national security issues, Trump said, “I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Putin. And I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Russia.” When asked about some of Putin’s troubling actions, Trump didn’t criticize the Russian president, suggesting instead that he could “start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time.”

Trump went on to praise Putin’s leadership and pooh-pooh concerns about Putin’s authoritarianism: “I mean, you can say, oh, isn’t that a terrible thing—the man has very strong control over a country.” Then on Thursday, Trump appeared on RT, a network operated by the Russian government, to slam American media and U.S. foreign policy and dismiss as “unlikely” the idea that the Russian government was involved in hacking the DNC’s email as American intelligence agencies believe.

Some conservatives have criticized Putin’s anti-democratic actions and strategic aims, and some Republicans were not happy about Trump’s recent remarks. But his running mate Mike Pence said it is “inarguable” that Putin is a stronger leader than President Obama. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Trump supporter, told CNN that Putin is a better leader for Russia than President Obama has been for the U.S., praising the increase in “hyper-nationalism” in Russia. Conspiracy-theory-promoting radio host Alex Jones, whose “amazing” reputation Trump has praised while appearing on his show , has expressed his admiration for Putin’s promotion of homeschooling and “masculine men.”

Trump will find himself in friendly company at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, an annual political gathering for the Religious Right. As Right Wing Watch has documented extensively, many U.S. religious conservatives have been cheerleaders for Putin because of his government’s anti-gay policies and his public support for “traditional values” and “Christian civilization.” Brian Brown, who heads both the National Organization for Marriage and the World Congress of Families, actually traveled to Russia a few years ago to testify on behalf of anti-gay legislation there.

In fact, Franklin Graham went to Russia just last fall, where he met with Putin, slammed President Obama for supporting “policies that contradict the teachings of God” and praised the Russian president for “protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda.” Graham reportedly said, “I call for prayers for the president of Russia, who is protecting traditional Christianity.” Graham also praised Russian involvement in Syria, which the Russian Orthodox Church has called a “holy battle.”

Putin has developed a mutually beneficial partnership with the Russian Orthodox Church, promoting Orthodoxy as a crucial element of Russian nationalism and a vehicle for extending Russian power and undercutting U.S. influence. Some American Religious Right leaders are taken with Putin’s promotion of a Christian state; the director of last year’s World Congress of Families summit, Janice Shaw Crouse, embraced the blasphemy-law prosecution and jail sentences given to members of the band Pussy Riot for protesting in a cathedral.

Perhaps Putin’s strategic partnership with the Orthodox Church has inspired Trump’s promise to conservative evangelical leaders that he will make Christianity more politically powerful by eliminating legal restrictions on electoral politicking by churches. So far, it has worked for him, helping him line up support from the leaders of the Values Voter Summit.

It is widely known that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was born in the fever swamps of conservative talk radio: In 2014, former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg listened “to thousands of hours of talk radio” as he formed the basis for the campaign’s message.

Previously Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate has been quoted describing himself as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf," but it turns out the fully caffeinated version inspired his political career.

Just over a month after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Pence delivered a speech on the House floor which served no other purpose than to heap praise on the conservative talker. Later that evening, many of his Republican colleagues would do the same, but Pence was unable to join a series of Special Orders speeches organized by Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston because his daughter was sick.

Pence, though, did dedicate his time on the floor to noting that “it is a literal truth, Mr. Speaker, to say that I am in Congress today because of Rush Limbaugh, and not because of some tangential impact on my career or his effect on the national debate; but because in fact after my first run for Congress in 1988, it was the new national voice emerging in 1989 across the heartland of Indiana of one Rush Hudson Limbaugh, III, that captured my imagination.”

He went on to claim he was “inspired by” Limbaugh’s “dulcet tones to seek a career in radio and television.”

While Pence has been portrayed as a moderating force on the Trump campaign, the truth is he has been “inspired” by the same offensive rhetoric the GOP nominee uses today. Limbaugh, by the time Pence effusively praised him on the House floor, already had a long track record of racist, sexist and homophobic comments.

Limbaugh told an African-American caller in the 1970s to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back." On his television show during the Clinton administration he stated, “Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?” while holding up a picture of Chelsea Clinton. He has since the 1990s repeatedly referred to prominent women as “feminazis” and has recalled saying on-air in the 1980s that “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” Of Native Americans he once said, “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?”

These were just a few quotes from the days before progressive groups and the media monitored Limbaugh’s show and posted his most offensive statements. However, his offensive and divisive reputation was already known.

Pence, in his first year in Congress, decided to tie his career to Limbaugh’s and he hasn’t cut the cord since.

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

It took almost no time at all for conservative pundits and politicians to claim that President Obama either wanted the terrorist attack in Orlando to take place or will use the tragedy to advance his nefarious agenda.

According to Jones, President Obama and other leaders are trying to encourage Muslims to settle in America in hopes that they will soon turn to violence, which will in turn justify government attempts to censor speech and seize firearms: “Our governments are bringing these people in and they’re allowing them to operate openly in our society so they can attack us and then have our freedoms taken.”

The fact that the shooter was born in New York didn’t stop Jones from blaming “the Islamic invasion” of America through immigration.

“I charge the left and I charge Obama and I charge the LGBT community in general with endangering America and with the blood of these 50-plus innocent men and women,” he said.

4) ‘Confiscate Muslims’

“Trunews” host Rick Wiles wants the government to go one step further than just banning Muslim immigration, telling his listeners that every single Muslim living in the U.S. must be rounded up and deported before Islam, which he said should be criminalized, “destroys civilization”:

The left is calling for gun control. What we need is Muslim control. We don’t need to confiscate guns, we need to confiscate Muslims. You’re not going to solve this problem until you round up the Muslims and ship them out of this country. End of discussion. Outlaw Islam. Make it an illegal religion. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Pass a constitutional amendment that says we’re a Christian nation and Islam is illegal. Done. Get rid of it. Stamp it out before it destroys civilization.

3) Tom DeLay Has Some Thoughts

Former House GOP Leader Tom DeLay weighed in on the massacre in Orlando by telling Wiles that the president is a Marxist/Islamist anti-American mastermind who has “empowered” terrorist groups and “put American lives in danger.”

“He’s certainly a Muslim sympathizer and he’s scared to death that the United States and the people of the United States will go after and discriminate against Muslims and that’s why he can’t say the words, ‘radical Islamists,’” he said. “It’s his worldview. This is who he is. He was raised in a communist upbringing. He hates America.”

2) ‘Obama Intends To Take Control Of The Internet’

Apparently unaware of how net neutrality works, Rush Limbaugh said today that the president, when he commented that “deranged individuals” like the Orlando shooter are often “warped by the hateful propaganda that they had seen over the internet,” actually revealed that he “intends to take control of the internet, using this as justification,” linking it back to Obama’s support for net neutrality rules.

“Obama's takeover of the internet will not be to prevent these kinds of things from happening,” he said. “He's got an entirely different agenda. All the Democrats do. It's total control. It's limiting access to information. It's about shutting down opposition. That's why they want control of the internet.” Watch via Media Matters:

If Limbaugh is really worried about an American leader using terrorism as an excuse to “take control of the internet,” then he should look no further than Donald Trump.

While Donald Trump seems to love Diamond and Silk, two pundits who have made a name for themselves with their pro-Trump videos, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has his suspicions.

Limbaugh worried that the two “black babes” are “stealth Democrats.” He said that they might be encouraging Democrats to register as Republicans in order to vote for Trump in certain closed primaries for the same reason that Limbaugh ran “Operation Chaos,” where he urged listeners to vote in the 2008 Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton “so she can continue battling Barack Obama and create chaos in the party, thereby aiding the Republicans this November.”

Now, Limbaugh is worried that the two are using his owntactics to sabotage the GOP’s chances in November by helping Trump win the nomination.

2) ‘Society Will Be Destroyed’ Due To Gay Marriage

When the Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage last year, we heard numerousright-wingpredictions about the horrible consequences of the decision, with many conservatives declaring that the next president must appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will overturn the ruling.

So it came as a surprise when Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, said in a recent interview that if his son isn’t elected president, then the Supreme Court will rule in favor of “the destruction of traditional marriage,” which is conservative code for marriage equality.

Such a decision, the elder Cruz said, will destroy the family and therefore “society will be destroyed.”

Since the ruling already took place, we wonder how families and society have survived despite same-sex couples getting married.

Naturally, Gallups denied his own verbatim quotes and insisted, as right-wing conspiracy theorists often do, that he was just asking the question. As he told the far-right conspiracy site WorldNetDaily:

“I can state, right now, that not only have I never said categorically that the Sandy Hook tragedy is a complete fabrication or hoax, right now, I’m denying that it was a hoax,” Gallups said.

“That doesn’t prevent me from asking questions. That doesn’t prevent me from saying, ‘Here’s a part of that whole scenario that is odd.’ When I’m behind that microphone interviewing people, I’m a radio host and an investigative reporter and so I make no apologies for asking those questions.”

…

“No one will find anywhere in writing or any audio clip taken in context, that I have ever claimed Sandy Hook is a complete hoax from top to bottom,” Gallups told WND. “I have always said, from the beginning, as many people were saying, that there are many things about the case that are strange.”

Gallups recently met with fellow lawman and Trump supporter Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff. At the meeting, he was sworn in as a “Special Deputy for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.”

Working with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, one of the country’s most vocal birthers, does not help his case that he is not a conspiracy theorist.

Rush Limbaugh knows who is to blame for the divisiveness of today's political climate and, of course, it is not people like him: "The divisiveness and the reason there is so much partisanship and mean-spirited, extreme rancor is all on the Democrats."

Without a hint of irony, David Barton complains that a Stanford history professor "selectively quotes [John] Adams to make him appear to say almost the opposite of what he actually said."

Billy Graham tells Christians in America to "prepare for persecution."

Theodore Shoebat is not a fan of Ben Carson's Seventh Day Adventist faith: "This is the fruit of the SDA: cult abuse, heresy, murder and the support for Nazism."

Some hard-hitting analysis from CBN's David Brody: "Watching Jeb Bush today at Regent University in Virginia Beach, it dawned on me: this guy is a serious candidate for the serious times we live in."

Finally, Robert Jeffress is "convinced that there are a legion of 'closeted' evangelical Trump supporters who are almost apologetic for being attracted to him."

While we are disappointed that the many prophecies about a financial crash or a natural disaster hitting the U.S. in September were pretty much a bust, right-wing commentators have new predictions about America’s future, this time involving Mars, Pope Francis and the United Nations.

Vladimir Putin has become a bona fide hero to American Religious Right activists, who see him as a conservative Christian counterweight to President Obama and his support for LGBT equality. Anti-gay activists, for instance, rallied around the Russian leader after the Kremlin approved a ban on speech dealing with “homosexual propaganda” to minors.

U.S. Religious Right activists have prioritized their absolute contempt for the LGBT community above solidarity with Protestants in Russia, who have comeunderattack by the state and its allies in the Orthodox Church, which views evangelicals as heretics. Protestants in the occupied area of eastern Ukraine have faced violent attacks from Putin-backed forces.

Seeing that American conservatives are more than happy to ignore Putin’s campaign against Protestantism since he is, after all, the defender of traditional marriage against gay rights, it is more than likely that they will look the other way now that he is “potentially allowing — or at the very least turning a blind eye to — polygamy among Russia’s estimated 16 million Muslims.”

Julia Ioffe explained in Foreign Policy last week that the Russian government allowed for a friend of Chechnya’s leader to take a second wife in a case that received widespread attention in the country.

As Ioffe writes, “Christian warrior Vladimir Putin” has allowed for the Chechen government to enforce Islamic religious law within its boundaries. Putin’s decision to allow Chechnya to become “a small Islamic state within the borders of the Russian Federation” has paved the way for the legalization of polygamy.

Ioffe points to a case where a teenage girl was married to a 57-year-old police chief who was already married at the time in an arrangement that had all the appearances of a forced marriage. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who, like Putin, has a notorious human rights record, made sure that the wedding took place and even appeared at the reception.

One of polygamy’s noted defenders ended up being the country’s foremost supporter of the “homosexual propaganda” law: Yelena Mizulina. Ioffe writes:

[W]hen a lone member of the parliament proposed a law criminalizing polygamy, the initiative was duly shot down by Yelena Mizulina, the parliamentarian who was among the most vocal supporters of Russia’s anti-gay laws and other “traditional values” initiatives. Criminalizing polygamy, Mizulina said, was “absurd.” The reason for polygamy, she argued was that “there are not enough men, the kind with whom women would want to start a family and have children.” Last week, Mizulina was promoted to the upper chamber of parliament.

Putin’s “ombudsman for children’s rights — who was behind Russia’s ban on American adoptions,” Ioffe adds, justified the wedding by claiming that “in the North Caucasus, puberty hits earlier, so 16 was a great age for marrying. ‘There are places where women shrivel up by 27,’ he said.”

The Religious Right’s support for Putin, an authoritarian leader who has infringed on basic liberties and the democratic process, undermined the freedom of religion, particularly for Protestants, and allowed for the creation of a Sharia law enclave where polygamy is legal, once again proves that for a certain segment of American conservatives, everything comes down to opposing homosexuality.

Alan Keyes, a far-right Catholic and perennial political candidate, argued that the facts about human contribution to climate change have not been established and warned that “the whole push for totalitarian government remediation of the allegedly terrible damage we are inflicting on God’s creation is a slander against the human race, a sin against humanity being committed as a pretext for the rape of human life, human conscience and God-endowed human liberty.”

The never-subtle Keyes said that when he looks “in the mirror of reason at the reflections Pope Francis offers in his encyclical, what I see looks unlike Jesus Christ (who as of now still comes to save and not harshly to penalize humanity).” He added, “Pope Francis’ reflections look more like Marx, Stalin or Mao Zedong – materialistic ideologues who punished not for the sake of God or truth, but on account of resentful, self-idolizing human will and ideology.”

Over at the free-market-adoring Acton Institute, Kishore Jayabalan was more respectful, saying he welcomed the pope’s encyclical, but wrote that he was disappointed that the pope “seems to blame markets, over-consumption and especially finance, rather than human sin, for all our environmental problems.”

Others have had much harsher words for Pope Francis. The reliably bloviating Rush Limbaugh said the encyclical seems to confirm that Francis is a Marxist, a sentiment echoed by Fox News pundit Greg Gutfield. James Delingpole, an editor at Breitbart, said the encyclical includes “hackneyed language and extremely dubious science you might expect from a 16-year-old trotting out the formulaic bilge and accepted faux-wisdom required these days…” At Fox Business, Stuart Varney warned of a sinister alliance between the Pope and President Barack Obama to “reshape the world by taxing the rich, taxing fossil fuels, and redistributing the wealth.” Right-wing radio host Michael Savage, furious at the encyclical, called the Pope “an eco-wolf in pope’s clothing” and “a stealth Marxist in religious garb,” claiming that Francis will put Catholics “in chains” and is reminiscent of “the false prophet in Revelation, an ecumenical spiritual figure directing mankind to worship the Antichrist.”

It’s not just a bunch of pundits.

The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg notes that Sen. James Inhofe, a notorious climate change denier, “bluntly told reporters that Francis was out of line.” Inhofe told attendees at a conference of the right-wing Heartland Institute, “The pope ought to stay with his job.” ThinkProgress notes that back in May, the Koch-funded Heartland Institute warned that “the Left” was working with the Pope on climate change, something akin to the “unholy alliance of international communism with the jihadi Islamists.”

Republican presidential candidates have also been slamming the encyclical. Jeb Bush, who has talked about his conversion to Catholicism on the campaign trail, has also suggested the Pope should butt out of the public conversation on climate change. “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm,” he said.

Rick Santorum said the church is not credible when “we get involved with controversial political and scientific theories,” not a concern he seems to have when the topic is, oh, same-sex couples getting married or being parents. He told an interviewer, “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.”

In her new book “Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole,” Ann Coulter works tirelessly to hand-pick the perfect “immigrant gone wrong” stories to convince us to deport them all. Coulter, an immigration reform opponent who hopes the government will “round up and deport 11 million illegals,” argues that “the only thing that stands between America and oblivion is a total immigration moratorium.”

Claiming that Democrats only support immigrant rights to get more votes, Coulter tells Republicans that “there is simply no reason for [them] to legalize 30 million people who will vote 8-2 against them.” This book, endorsed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly, and Roy Beck of the anti-immigrant group Numbers USA, proves to be one of Coulter’s most outlandish works yet.

Coulter starts us off with sound advice regarding the type of immigrants we should and should not be letting in to America. According to Coulter, America needs to draft immigrants like the New England Patriots draft players. “No one guilts them into taking a blind kid with one leg over an All American – much less the blind kid’s cousin,” she quips. Because we are in a “sellers’ market,” Coulter urges the Land of the Free to turn away “immigrants’ elderly relatives arriving in wheelchairs,” as well as “cripples, illiterates, and the desperately poor.”

“Earlier immigrants proved their heartiness by vomiting all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to get here,” she asserts, implying that those who risk life and limb to enter into the U.S. today simply don’t cut it. And in case you were confused, “America is not a ‘nation of immigrants,’ it is not an ‘idea,' it was never ‘diverse,’ and ‘diversity’ is a catastrophe.” And, she says, America is white: “Without the white settlers, what is known as 'America' would still be an unnamed continent full of migratory tribes chasing the rear end of a buffalo every time their stomachs growled.”

Moreover, America was virtually perfect before the arrival of “brown people,” Coulter informs us. And no, she is not referring to African Americans who, just in case you were murky on your history, were “freed by Republicans, then discriminated against for another century— mostly by Democrats— until Republicans finally got the Democrats to stop.” Instead, Coulter is referring to Latin American and Asian immigrants, who “don’t get to piggyback on the black experience in America.”

“What’s going to happen when a mostly white senior population is being supported by a mostly brown younger population,” Coulter wonders, before asserting that “despite a hegemonic propaganda campaign about all cultures being equal, they aren’t.” She continues that “there’s nothing good about diversity, other than the food, and we don’t need 128 million Mexicans for the restaurants.”

And when it comes to Somalis, “even Somalia doesn’t want Somalis,” so why should we?

Coulter presents cold, hard facts to back up her claims, especially her argument that immigrants are inherently violent. “Ninety percent of the names on the U.S. Marshals’ list of most wanted criminals would not have been recognizable as names fifty years ago,” she claims. And, moreover, “the dream of many 'Dreamers' is to rob, assault, and murder Americans.”

“When it comes to multiculturalism,” Coulter warns, “you can’t say, We love the empanadas— but we don’t want forty-year-old men raping their nieces. You don’t get to choose. This is not a buffet.” And just so everyone is clear, “gang rape, child rape, elder rape, and murder rape are highly correlated with specific ethnic groups— ethnic groups we are bringing to America by the busload.”

What about white rapists? They simply do not exist, writes Coulter. This is because “white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America” is alone in the world as a haven for minorities, women, children, plants, and animals. None have fared so well in any other culture.” America, a nation that has apparently been “taking rape seriously since the first settlers arrived,” is chock-full of “neurotic” women and journalists who cook up “false accusations of rape against American white men.” In fact, “under the diversity regime, everyone gets special rights and privileges, except white men.”

“You can’t make a governing Democratic coalition without breaking a few girls,” Coulter remarks.

Because of all this, Coulter advises Republicans to quit trying to appeal to black and Latino voters and just stick to recruiting white voters by stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment. Or, as she puts it, Republicans “should be unapologetically opposing the transformation of America into a Third World country.”

Coulter’s “advice” for Republicans seems to be resonating in a party that recently quashed an immigration reform bill making its way through Congress. Years after the GOP released an “autopsy” report urging Republicans to “embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform” in a way that “takes into consideration the unique perspective if the Hispanic community,” Republican leaders now seem to be coming around to Coulter’s perspective that immigration reform is bad for the country and that Republicans should campaign on their anti-immigrant stances rather than trying to broaden the party’s appeal beyond its traditional base.

“When Republicans ignore white voters, they lose. When they ignore minorities and drive up the white vote, they win,” Coulter asserts.

Coulter isn’t screaming into a void: it appears that many right-wing presidential hopefuls are following suit.

Coulter, who credits white nationalist Peter Brimelow for her anti-immigrant politics, praises the hardline “self-deportation” platform that Mitt Romney embraced in his 2012 presidential bid. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently told Glenn Beck that he seeks to reducelegal immigration levels, while Rick Santorum has boasted that he has tried to lower legal immigration rates for years and chastises the Democratic Party for “selling their souls” by backing immigration reform. These candidates have cynically touted their anti-immigrant streaks as a way to attract white working class voters, just as Coulter recommends.

The Republican Party seems determined to confront the shifting demographics of the American electorate not by changing their policies, but by attempting to change the demographics. It says a lot that it’s Ann Coulter who is leading the charge.

When President Obama isn’t secretly ordering riots in Baltimore from the Oval Office, he is plotting a military coup through the Jade Helm 15 drill and a bullet ban through the EPA. Quite a week for our “apathetic,” “ lazy” president.

Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council also described marriage equality as a threat to freedom this week, writing that the Supreme Court is “headed for another Dred Scott opinion” if it finds same-sex marriage bans to be unconstitutional, referring to the ruling which said that African Americans could not be U.S. citizens.

“If the Court overturns marriage, it will not only further delegitimize itself as an institution, it will gravely damage American society,” he said. “And it will undermine the ‘consent of the governed’ — the only basis for just laws.”

Blackwell, notorious for his efforts as Ohio’s secretary of state to stiflevoting in the 2004 election, went on to compare judges who rule in favor of marriage equality to officials in the Jim Crow South who restricted the voting rights of African Americans: “We should remember Selma and the ‘Bloody Sunday’ that was necessary to achieve the too-long-denied equal voting rights for all our citizens. Today, rogue federal judges are engaged in the most massive case of voter suppression we have seen since the days of Jim Crow! Across the country, but especially in the South, black Americans joined other citizens in voting to affirm true marriage.”

But neither Blackwell nor Cruz can claim the prize for the most distraught outburst against gay marriage of the week, as that honor belongs to Indiana politician John Price, who suggested that Americans should “flee” the U.S. before the Supreme Court rules on marriage rights.

I’ve watched with dismay the controversy surrounding Amarillo Town Club’s family membership policy, which was placed prominently before our community by the Amarillo Globe-News on March 2 with its front-page article showing a picture of two angry-looking homosexual women.

The story was also mentioned by a reader in a letter to the editor (Letter: Shame on Amarillo Town Club, March 6, amarillo.com) who believed the business’ conduct was “shameful.”

Shameful? Sometimes I feel like we are living in the twilight zone.

Mechler went on to write that people who criticize his view that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be legalized are actually attacking the freedom of speech: “What I find troubling is the incredible attack that has been launched on free speech. I love this country, and as an American the Bill of Rights gives me the right to say what I please.”

3) Immigrants Will Take Your Guns

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt is a staunch opponent of immigration reform since he believes that new citizens will vote Democratic and “take away our guns.”

Pratt expanded on this theory in an interview with Armed America Radio recently, explaining that immigrants have a “dependent mentality” and thus don’t understand what it’s like to want to protect yourself from bodily harm.

“A dependent class that depends on the government for their income, for all kinds of financial and other assistance, is not generally of a mind to be able to protect itself, which is after all the most important part about living, is staying alive from one moment to the next in case some dirtbag wants to try to terminate you,” he said. “And if you don’t think enough of your own freedom to take charge of that aspect of your existence, then of course you’re likely to expect handouts and ‘more, more, more’ because you have a dependent mentality.”

On Wednesday, as Media Matters notes, Rush Limbaugh made a similar claim, alleging that administration officials knew Petraeus was leaking sensitive material but “kept it in reserve” and acted on it only “when Petraeus refused to go out and spout the company line on Benghazi.” Limbaugh said that Clinton knew that this cover-up of the cover-up occurred, and that is why she used a personal email account at the State Department: “And so Mrs. Clinton knew that they knew, because she was secretary of state when they sent Petraeus out there to spout the company line and refused to do it. Plus she knew Obama — so that server is to keep things from Obama.”

Since “Obama himself may not even be constitutionally eligible for office,” according to Farah, there is reason to believe that “he and his family might remain in Washington after leaving office” since he has no respect for the Constitution anyway. After all, Farah believes that the Obama family enjoys lavish vacations and is “living it up” on the taxpayers’ dime so much that they may refuse to leave the White House.

Farah even suggested that groups like People For the American Way are paving the way for the third Obama term since there is “simply no organized opposition to Obama’s illegal, criminal actions and behavior.” The only one who can stop Obama, Farah writes, may be Hillary Clinton.

Conservative pundits are downright furious about the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to preserve net neutrality, ensuring that internet service providers treat all data equally. But their anger seems driven more by reflexive hostility to any proposal that President Obama supports rather than an understanding of the principle behind net neutrality.

A group of GOP politicians, including two likely presidential candidates, have decided to appear in a documentary with anti-gay radicals accusing the equality movement of trying to ban religion. Such politicians already kowtow to extreme voices like Rush Limbaugh and the anti-government ideologues at Fox News, so it makes sense that they are now joining together to make absurd claims about the supposed dangers of gay rights in America.

Supporters of marriage equality made tremendous progress this year in striking down discriminatory bans on same-sex marriages while, on the local level, more municipalities have enacted legal protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Radical Right, however, sees these changes as a reason to find new strategies to fight what it believes is a tyrannical government bent on persecuting conservatives and inviting divine punishment. Facing losses in court and at the ballot box, many conservatives hope that their brand of anti-gay politics may find more success overseas.

Just in case you thought that the debate over gay rights was “over,” we decided to look back on some of the anti-gay Right’s worst moments of 2014.

10. Comparing LGBT Americans To Nazis And Terrorists

There’s nothing that Religious Right activists love more than to pretend they are being oppressed by the LGBT community.

While conservatives rail against civil disobedience to protest police brutality, they are hopeful that the anti-gay movement will launch its own civil disobedience campaigns. In 2014, Sen. Ted Cruz urged gay rights opponents to “disregard unjust edicts from the government” and Fox News pundit Todd Starnes predicted that conservatives would take part in acts of civil disobedience and marches reminiscent of the Civil Rights Movement. Pat Buchanan, Linda Harvey and Jeff Allen also joined calls for mass civil disobedience to protest LGBT equality, while Peter LaBarbera proposed protests to stop same-sex weddings.

While the Duggar family usually campaigns for Republican candidates across the country come election time, in 2014 they worked in their home state of Arkansas to repeal an ordinance in the city of Fayetteville that added the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity to existing bans on discrimination in areas such as commerce, housing and employment.

But Josh Duggar, who claims that God sent him to Washington D.C. to work with Family Research Council in opposing LGBT rights, defended their work to strip LGBT people of their rights and legal protections because it is done out of love for the LGBT community.

5. Rick Perry Goes There

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign flamed out after a series of poor debate performances, he used gay-baiting TV ads in one last desperate attempt to win the GOP nomination. Now, as Perry prepares for the 2016 campaign, it seems that by wearing new eyeglasses he is all of a sudden the new wonky candidate. He showed off this new-found knowledge during an appearance in California where he reacted to the news that the Texas GOP had adopted a resolution endorsing “reparative therapy and treatment” to help people “escape from the homosexual lifestyle” by comparing gay people to alcoholics.

“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,” Perry told the Commonwealth Club of California to audible groans from the crowd. “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

After the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, marriage equality opponents looked to their allies in Washington D.C. to try to reverse the court’s decision. Sen. Ted Cruz was more than happy to help, and the Texas senator joined Mike Lee, Utah’s freshman senator, in introducing the State Marriage Defense Act. The bill’s stated purpose is to undercut federal recognition of married same-sex couples, and while it didn’t gain much traction in Congress, it did give Cruz an opportunity to grandstand about his dreams of curtailing gay rights. He told right-wing radio hosts that his “heart weeps” due to same-sex couples’ legal victories, calling rulings in favor of marriage equality “heartbreaking” and a sign “that our constitutional liberties are being eroded.”

After the Supreme Court recently refused to hear appeals in several cases involving same-sex marriage rights, Cruz decided to introduce a constitutional amendment to ensure that the 14th Amendment cannot be used in cases involving equal rights for gays and lesbians.

One American Family Association radio host blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the U.S. military’s “sissification,” and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council linked the lifting of the ban on gay service members to what he called the “absolute destruction of our military readiness and our military morale.” Gordon Klingenschmitt read a statement on his “Pray In Jesus Name” program from a press release alleging that gay service members will soon be “taking breaks on the combat field to change diapers all because their treacherous sin causes them to lose control of their bowels.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, captured the mood best when he alleged that the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will make the U.S. more “vulnerable to terrorism” because gay soldiers will take after the ancient Greeks in bringing their lovers to the frontlines so they can “give them massages before they go into battle.”

This year, Uganda’s president signed into law a new version of the country’s “Anti-Homosexuality Act” which imposed extreme penalties for the crime of being gay (though dropping its provision making homosexuality a death penalty offense in certain cases). American anti-gay activists mostly offered praise to the East African nation. At least one group thought that Uganda should have kept its death penalty plank.

Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin lawmaker who last month won his race for an open seat in the U.S. House, also attacked opponents of Uganda’s anti-gay law, warning that people like Sec. John Kerry will bring about God’s judgment on America for his criticisms of Uganda.

In this special edition of Paranoia-Rama, we look at five of the most incendiary and unhinged responses from our friends on the Radical Right to President Obama’s announcement that he would grant temporary deportation relief to some unauthorized immigrants and his speech last night laying out his plan.